Monday, August 20, 2007

Dude, I'm So Baked!

Recently, I've picked up baking. No, really. I love it. However, I wouldn't have started this shocking trend if it hadn't been born out of necessity.

My family's surname should be "Sweettooth". Forget this "Goings" nonsense. From now on, I'm going to be writing under the name "Becka Sweettooth." Seriously. On any given day, usually right after DH sets down his dinner plate (as we eat in front of the TV most nights), he'll ask me what's for dessert. Normally, it would have been some ice-creamy-sandwichy-cookie-brownie concoction I purchased at the local S-mart. (Shop smart. Shop S-mart. You got that?!?!?!) **if you recognize that movie quote, give yourself 1,000 Campbell points.**

Anyhow, all these dessert-y items were being consumed in mass quantities. Yes, we're fatty-fatty-2X4's over here and proud of it. **Ahem** Have you SEEN the size of my family? And I'm not talking girth, here folks, I'm talking sheer numbers. A package of Chips Ahoy cookies, for example, can be consumed within a couple of days. So you figure, a package of cookies is about $3.50, give or take.

A package of flour costs about the same, however, you can get many, many dozens of cookies out of it--if you bake them yourself. At about that time, I had what Dr. Phil (or is it Oprah?) calls a "lightbulb moment" right there in the grocery store. "Self," I said, "It's about time I did something about this horrid grocery bill." Taking a look, I realized a lot of it was going toward dessert-y items.

Huh.

Okay, okay, I can hear you, ya know. Why not just cut out the sweets all together?

**GASP!!** Then I'd ruin this figure I've been working my whole life to obtain! lol Seriously, I can't live without my sugar fix. But this post isn't about the 100 pounds of junk food Becka packs away in a year, it's about baking. Moving on.

So I go to Costco and I come to their baking aisle and I see this GIANT bag of flour and this HUGE bag of sugar and a GINORMOUS bag of brown sugar. All bags were in the $5.00 range. Compare this to the $3.50 bag o' flour at S-mart (Safeway, for those of you not paying attention), this was a good buy. And since I'd endeavored to begin making my own dessert-y items from now on, I purchased said bags.

Now, to top all this cookie-brownie-cake baking I've been doing lately, I figured heck, if I've got the flour, might as well buy yeast and make bread! LOL I have a bread machine, and I've had it for about 10 years. (Dayam, has it been that long?!?) Anyhow, I couldn't remember EVER using the dough cycle. I'd always just made the full loaves in it. My philosophy of old was "Who'd want to use just the dough cycle when you have a fricken' BREAD MAKER that could just make the entire loaf for you?"

But I have since seen the light. You see, storebought rolls at your local bakery might seem like a good buy. But over time, when you buy them again and again, costs can add up. Yes, we also like to eat rolls and biscuits with our dinners. So I cracked open my bread machine cook books and found some awesome bread dough recipies for rolls. I also made my own calzone crust one evening. (Use chicken broth instead of water in the recipe. You'll thank me later!)

But the bread machine comes in handy because I hate the mixing/kneading of the dough, not to mention the rising of it. But in the machine, you put in the ingredients, wait about an hour and a half, and all you need to do is make rolls and pop in oven. Voila!

All this baking started when I wanted to learn how to make my own jam. Now, I've devolved into some 19th century (or 1950's) mom who actually BAKES for her family. LOL DH asked me the other night, "What's gotten into you? **Not that I'm complaining...**" Heheheh... I do enjoy making bread and desserts and jams. I just love the fact that I can throw things together in my kitchen and they come out as some cool concoction I can eat! And 9 times out of 10, they taste a million times better than storebought.

And truth be told, my kitchen doesn't even get that dirty. As long as I start my baking with an empty dishwasher, I'm good to go! And the family LOVES it. With my satchels of sugar and flour, I should be set for many, many cookies, cakes and calzones to come. :)

Hi Becka, I love baking too. I always put my breadmaker on dough cycle too. Right now though, my darn kids are all playing sports, two in college, two in high school and they're telling ME. "Mom, I can't eat that. It's NOT good for me." Where did I go wrong as a mother? Good luck with the baking. The pictures looked delicious.